Summer heat: wished for in the winter, eager to escape in the summer. Fickle we are.

The short journey from the Columbia Plateau (hot) to the Pacific Ocean (mild and breezy) is a traveler’s delight. Our recent route is through the Columbia Gorge …

… onward to Astoria Oregon. The bridge there crosses the Columbia River. It is 4 miles in length, reportedly the longest continuous truss bridge in North America, and about 14 miles away from the Columbia River meeting the Pacific Ocean.

Onward to the sea … to the wreck of the Peter Iredale! The Peter Iredale was a four-masted steel barque that ran ashore October 25, 1906, on the Oregon coast.

Ahhh … the coast. Warm sun, not hot. Breezes. Clear days.

Lord Byron, “Apostrophe to the Ocean”:
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

We’ve arrived.